The Salesforce machine doesn’t let up and only gets stronger over time. With a driving force and visionary like Marc Benioff at the helm time will tell just how big Salesforce will become. Few people in the world think as big as Marc – of course there’s Bezos and Masa - but Marc has an added dimension to his persona. He is striving to build an organization based on something profoundly cultural.
In his latest strategic endeavor, Salesforce Ventures announced its investment of $300 million in Autommatic, the parent company of web publishing and ecommerce platforms WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and enterprise WordPress VIP. Existing investors in the company include Insight, Tiger Global, and True Ventures. Autommatic took in the funding to expand its organization and invest in growing the WordPress ecosystem.
Two fascinating points about the company are that it is has a completely remote workforce and it powers 34% of all sites on the web. It has more than 900 employees working from 71 countries.
Co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Autommatic Matt Mullenweg commented, "The investment and partnership with Salesforce represents a tremendous vote of confidence in Automattic's business and the future of the open web."
Salesforce’s Chief Product Officer Bret Taylor added, "Through Salesforce's investment and partnership with Automattic we look forward to deepening our commitment to WordPress and the open web."
Automattic is a staunch supporter of Open Source and the vast majority of its work is available under GPL. Its goal is to democratize publishing so that anyone with a story can tell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.
Similar to Benioff, Matt has vision and has proven capable to sticking to a grand vision over the long run, "Matt is an incredible entrepreneur. We're thrilled to invest in Automattic's growth and success, and deepen our commitment to the open web," said Benioff.
